ABC Jodi Arias at her trial
In 2013, Jodi Arias was convicted of first-degree murder for the brutal killing of her ex-boyfriend Travis Alexander. Now in a new Lifetime special, her former cellmates, Donavan Bering and Tracey Brown, are speaking out about their time getting to know Arias in prison. In fact, Bering told Heavy that Arias is a “cold-blooded killer and would do it again.”
That special, Jodi Arias: Cellmate Secrets, airs Saturday, August 8 at 10 p.m. ET/PT on Lifetime, directly following a rebroadcast of the Lifetime movie about the murder called Jodi Arias: Dirty Little Secret at 8 p.m.
Ahead of those, here’s what you need to know about Arias now.
Arias Recently Asked For a New Trial But Was Not Granted One
Arias’ conviction came in 2013, five years after Alexander’s murder. She was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole on April 13, 2015. In 2020, she petitioned the Arizona Court of Appeals to grant her a new trial due to alleged prosecutorial misconduct on the part of Maricopa County prosecutor Juan Martinez. But the court did not grant her order, despite finding that Martinez did exhibit a “pattern of intentional misconduct” that “saturated the trial,” according to USA Today.
Martinez is also facing numerous allegations of sexual harassment inside the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office. According to AZ Central, the state bar of Arizona filed a formal misconduct complaint against Martinez that claimed he “harassed several women who worked at the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office and Maricopa County Superior Court.” It also alleged that he leaked a juror’s name from the Arias case to a blogger with whom he was in a relationship and then lied to investigators about it, according to AZ Family. Martinez’s disciplinary hearing took place in April 2020.
At the hearing, the Arizona Supreme Court ruled that Martinez should be reprimanded for ethical misconduct in three capital murder cases. According to AZ Central, Martinez “violated the rule that prohibits lawyers from engaging in conduct that is prejudicial to the administration of justice.'” Specifically, the court ruled that Martinez made inappropriate comments to the juries in those trials.
In July 2020, Martinez was disbarred. However, none of this has earned Arias a new trial because when she petitioned for one, the judge ruled that she was convicted based on her guilt despite Martinez’s actions.
However, when Martinez was disbarred, Arias’ ethics attorney Karen Clark told AZ Family, “In my opinion, this is long overdue. His misconduct goes back years. … The Jody Arias case was a very high profile trial and the allegations in these bar charges involved things that were going on behind the scenes that the public did not know about.”
Arias remains a resident of the Arizona Department of Corrections #281129, which is located at Arizona State Prison Complex – Perryville. According to RadarOnline, in 2016, a call between Arias and rapper Lefty leaked to the media in which she can be heard saying, “If this is what it is like to be hated, then keep hating! I’ve had so much love coming in my direction I can’t even respond to it now.”
Arias’ Former Cellmates Think She May Have Had an Accomplice
Alexander was stabbed 27 times before being shot in the head. Arias claimed it was self-defense and she never mentioned an accomplice, but in the new Lifetime special, her former cellmates Bering and Brown “reveal details and shocking information that they heard directly from Arias, including a bombshell new theory about the night of Alexander’s murder.”
In the preview, Bering says, “When she did it, she had a smile on her face … Jodi said that she had an accomplice.”
Brown adds, “She could get anybody to do whatever she wanted … people were convinced that we had a threesome.”
Jodi Arias: Dirty Little Secret airs Saturday, August 8 at 8 p.m. ET/PT on Lifetime, followed by Jodi Arias: Cellmate Secrets at 10 p.m. ET/PT.
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